A 22-item work profile for roles centered on helping, caring for, teaching, or serving people.
Method and research sourcesThe Human Services Survey measures emotional exhaustion, depersonalization or emotional distancing from recipients, and personal accomplishment in work that directly helps or serves people.
Every item records frequency from 0 (never) to 6 (every day). Nine items form exhaustion, five form depersonalization, and eight form personal accomplishment. The positive accomplishment scale is kept in its original direction; there is no combined score.
The 1981 paper established the three-dimensional measure. WHO defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon, and the recent Occupational Medicine review summarizes form selection and cautions against a single total.
Christina Maslach, Susan E. Jackson
World Health Organization
Robert T. Lee
Related resources address stress, wellbeing, sleep, and professional support—not a diagnosis.
What burnout means in the WHO definition, why fatigue or a supposed stage cannot identify it, and how to address workload, recovery and professional support.
What might explain brain fog, how to reduce demands on attention, when to seek medical assessment, and why burnout cannot explain every cognitive change.
Take the 10-item PSS-10 and reflect on how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded life felt during the last month.
Reflect on positive mental wellbeing over the past two weeks with the 14-item Warwick–Edinburgh scale.
Complete the seven-item ISI and review a careful interpretation of sleep difficulties over the past two weeks.
It is designed for sustained human-service work. For jobs without clients, patients, students, or similar recipients, the MBI General Survey or another work-stress measure is a better fit.
The three scales are independent and one runs in a positive direction. Adding them would hide distinct patterns and is not the standard interpretation.
WHO lists it as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition. Similar symptoms can also require medical or mental-health assessment.
